2 - Beyond Academic Imperialism in Comparative Studies of the Global South: Methodological Reflections
Corresponding Author(s) : Madalitso Zililo Phiri
Journal of Higher Education in Africa,
Vol. 19 No. 2 (2021): Journal of Higher Education in Africa
Abstract
Contemporary debates on decolonisation have reluctantly forced social scientists to engage with neglected debates on race and epistemology. This article recasts these debates through methodological reflections that compare South African and Brazilian social policies by centring the interpellations of racial capitalism, poverty, inequality, and social exclusion. I conducted forty- five in-depth interviews with beneficiaries of social assistance programmes such as social grants and Bolsa Familia and with policymakers in South Africa and Brazil. Both countries offer compelling cases for comparison because they share important characteristics. How does the generation of knowledge in comparative public policy aid in advancing methodological perspectives that lead towards an imagination of a more democratic global social science? I offer a methodological reflexivity that challenges academic imperialism and underscores the importance of how local questions have global relevance in advancing an agenda for knowledge decolonisation. I achieve this by critiquing the positivist tradition in comparative sociology.
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- Adésínà, J.O., 2006, ‘Sociology, endogeneity and the challenge of transformation’, African Sociological Review, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 133–150.
- Adésínà, J.O., 2008, ‘Archie Mafeje and the pursuit of endogeneity: against alterity and extroversion’, Africa Development, Vol. XXXIII, No. 4, pp. 33–152.
- Akpan, W., 2010, ‘Confronting the referentialisation challenge: back to hope, being, and other “forgotten” sociologies’, South African Review of Sociology, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 117–126.
- Akpan, W., 2011, ‘“Local” knowledge, “global” knowledge, “development” knowledge: finding a new balance in the knowledge power play’, South African Review of Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 116–127.
- Alatas, S.F., 2000, ‘Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits, and problems’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 23–45.
- Alatas, S.F., 2003, ‘Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences’, Current Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 6, pp. 599–613.
- Alatas, S.F., 2006, ‘The autonomous, the universal and the future of sociology’, Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 7–23.
- Alves, J.A. and Vargas, J.C., 2020, ‘The spectre of Haiti: structural antiblackness, the far-right backlash and the fear of a black majority in Brazil’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 645–662. (https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1695116). 13 June 2021.
- Alves, J.A., 2011, ‘Topografias da violencia: necropoder e governamentalidade espacial em Sao Paulo [Topographies of violence: necropower and spatial governmentality in Sao Paulo]’, Revista do Departamento de Geografia da USP, Vol. 22, pp. 108–134.
- Alves, J.A., 2014a, ‘On mules and bodies: black captivities in the Brazilian racial democracy’, Critical Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 229–248.
- Alves, J.A., 2014b, ‘Neither humans nor rights: some notes on the double negation of black life in Brazil’, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 143–162.
- Alves, J.A., 2018, The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Amin, S., 2009 [1989], Eurocentrism: modernity, religion, and democracy: a critique of Eurocentrism and culturalism, New York: Monthly Review Press.
- Anderson, B., 1983, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.
- Andrews, G.R., 1996, ‘Brazilian racial democracy, 1900–90: an American counter- point’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 483–507.
- Barrientos, A., 2013, ‘The rise of social assistance in Brazil’, Development and Change, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 887–910.
- Bonilla-Silva, E. & Zuberi, T., 2008, ‘Toward a definition of white logic and white methods, in T. Zuberi & E. Bonilla-Silva, eds., White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
- Burden-Stelly, C., 2018, ‘Black studies in the westernized university: the interdisciplines and the elision of political economy’, in J. Cupples and R. Grosfoguel, eds., Unsettling Eurocentrism in the Westernized University, London: Routledge.
- Central Intelligence Agency, undated, The World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/). 20 June 2021.
- Cesaire, A., 1972, Discourse on colonialism, New York: Monthly Review Press.
- Chakrabarty, D., 2000, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
- Chilisa, B., 2012, Indigenous Research Methodologies. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
- Collier, D., 1993, ‘The comparative method’, in A. W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: the State of the Discipline II, Washington, D.C: American Political Science Association, pp. 105–119.
- Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J., 2012, Theory from the South: or How Euro-America is Evolving toward Africa, New York: Paradigm Publishers.
- Connell, R., 2007, Southern Theory: the global dynamics of knowledge in social science, Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Diop, C.A., 1981, Civilization or barbarism: An authentic anthropology, Paris: Presence Africaine.
- Esping-Andersen, G., 1985, Politics against markets, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
- Esping-Andersen, G., 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity.
- Esping-Andersen, G., 2013, Equality with a happy bourgeoisie: the social democratic road to equality, Barcelona: Citeseer.
- Fanon, F., 1963, The wretched of the earth, London: Penguin Books.
- Fischer, Frank, Gerald J. Miller and Mara S. Sidney., 2007, Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods, eds., Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor and Francis Group.
- Gee, W., 1950, Social science research methods, New York: Appleton-Century-Croft. Gordon, L.R., 2014, ‘Disciplinary decadence and the decolonisation of knowledge’, Africa Development, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, pp. 81–92.
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- Hall, S., 2019 [1992], ‘The West and the rest: discourse and power’, in D. Morley, ed., Stuart Hall: Essential Essays Volume 2, Durham: Duke University Press.
- Hasenbalg, C., and Huntington, S., 1982, ‘Brazilian racial democracy: reality or myth’, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 129–142.
- Holliday, I., 2000, ‘Productivist welfare capitalism: social policy in East Asia’, Political Studies, Vol. 48, pp.706–723.
- Hoppers, C.O. and Richards, H., 2012, Rethinking Thinking: Modernity’s ‘Other’ and the Transformation of the University, Pretoria: University of South Africa.
- Horne, G., 2007, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African slave trade, New York: New York University Press.
- Hountondji, P., 1990, ‘Recherche et extraversion: éléments pour une sociologie de la science dans les pays de la périphérie’, Africa Development, Vol. XV, No. ¾, pp. 149–158.
- Huchzermeyer, M., 2002, ‘Informal settlements: production and intervention in twentieth-century Brazil and South Africa’, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 83–105.
- Huchzermeyer, M., 2004, Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil, Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.
- Leubolt, B., 2013, ‘Institutions, discourse and welfare: Brazil as a distributional regime’, Global Social Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 66–83.
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- Mafeje, A., 2001, Anthropology in Post-Independence Africa: End of an Era or the Problem Self-Redefination [sic], Nairobi: Heinrich Böll Foundation.
- Magubane, B., 1979, The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press.
- Mamdani, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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- Marx, A., 1998, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa and Brazil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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- Moran, Michael, Rein, Martin and Goodin, Robert, E., 2018, Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Mudimbe, V.Y., 1988, The invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
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- Nkrumah, K., 1973, Revolutionary Path, London: Panaf Books.
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- Nyoka, B., 2016, ‘Bernard Magubane’s “The Making of a Racist State” revisited: 20 years on’, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 47, No. 8, pp. 903–927.
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- Oyewùmí, O., 2002, ‘Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies’, A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2.
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- Said, E.,1994, Representations of the Intellectual, London: Vintage.
- Sandoval, C., 2000, Methodology of the Oppressed, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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- Short, S.E., 2006, ‘Focus group interviews’ in E. Perecman and S.R. Curran, eds., A Handbook for Social Science Research: Essays and Bibliographic Sources on Research Design and Methods, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, pp. 103–116.
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References
Adésínà, J.O., 2006, ‘Sociology, endogeneity and the challenge of transformation’, African Sociological Review, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 133–150.
Adésínà, J.O., 2008, ‘Archie Mafeje and the pursuit of endogeneity: against alterity and extroversion’, Africa Development, Vol. XXXIII, No. 4, pp. 33–152.
Akpan, W., 2010, ‘Confronting the referentialisation challenge: back to hope, being, and other “forgotten” sociologies’, South African Review of Sociology, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 117–126.
Akpan, W., 2011, ‘“Local” knowledge, “global” knowledge, “development” knowledge: finding a new balance in the knowledge power play’, South African Review of Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 116–127.
Alatas, S.F., 2000, ‘Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits, and problems’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 23–45.
Alatas, S.F., 2003, ‘Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences’, Current Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 6, pp. 599–613.
Alatas, S.F., 2006, ‘The autonomous, the universal and the future of sociology’, Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 7–23.
Alves, J.A. and Vargas, J.C., 2020, ‘The spectre of Haiti: structural antiblackness, the far-right backlash and the fear of a black majority in Brazil’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 645–662. (https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1695116). 13 June 2021.
Alves, J.A., 2011, ‘Topografias da violencia: necropoder e governamentalidade espacial em Sao Paulo [Topographies of violence: necropower and spatial governmentality in Sao Paulo]’, Revista do Departamento de Geografia da USP, Vol. 22, pp. 108–134.
Alves, J.A., 2014a, ‘On mules and bodies: black captivities in the Brazilian racial democracy’, Critical Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 229–248.
Alves, J.A., 2014b, ‘Neither humans nor rights: some notes on the double negation of black life in Brazil’, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 143–162.
Alves, J.A., 2018, The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Amin, S., 2009 [1989], Eurocentrism: modernity, religion, and democracy: a critique of Eurocentrism and culturalism, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Anderson, B., 1983, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.
Andrews, G.R., 1996, ‘Brazilian racial democracy, 1900–90: an American counter- point’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 483–507.
Barrientos, A., 2013, ‘The rise of social assistance in Brazil’, Development and Change, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 887–910.
Bonilla-Silva, E. & Zuberi, T., 2008, ‘Toward a definition of white logic and white methods, in T. Zuberi & E. Bonilla-Silva, eds., White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Burden-Stelly, C., 2018, ‘Black studies in the westernized university: the interdisciplines and the elision of political economy’, in J. Cupples and R. Grosfoguel, eds., Unsettling Eurocentrism in the Westernized University, London: Routledge.
Central Intelligence Agency, undated, The World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/). 20 June 2021.
Cesaire, A., 1972, Discourse on colonialism, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Chakrabarty, D., 2000, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Chilisa, B., 2012, Indigenous Research Methodologies. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Collier, D., 1993, ‘The comparative method’, in A. W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: the State of the Discipline II, Washington, D.C: American Political Science Association, pp. 105–119.
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J., 2012, Theory from the South: or How Euro-America is Evolving toward Africa, New York: Paradigm Publishers.
Connell, R., 2007, Southern Theory: the global dynamics of knowledge in social science, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Diop, C.A., 1981, Civilization or barbarism: An authentic anthropology, Paris: Presence Africaine.
Esping-Andersen, G., 1985, Politics against markets, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Esping-Andersen, G., 1990, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity.
Esping-Andersen, G., 2013, Equality with a happy bourgeoisie: the social democratic road to equality, Barcelona: Citeseer.
Fanon, F., 1963, The wretched of the earth, London: Penguin Books.
Fischer, Frank, Gerald J. Miller and Mara S. Sidney., 2007, Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods, eds., Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor and Francis Group.
Gee, W., 1950, Social science research methods, New York: Appleton-Century-Croft. Gordon, L.R., 2014, ‘Disciplinary decadence and the decolonisation of knowledge’, Africa Development, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, pp. 81–92.
Gordon, L.R., 2019, ‘Decolonising philosophy’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 57, pp. 16–36.
Hall, S., 2019 [1992], ‘The West and the rest: discourse and power’, in D. Morley, ed., Stuart Hall: Essential Essays Volume 2, Durham: Duke University Press.
Hasenbalg, C., and Huntington, S., 1982, ‘Brazilian racial democracy: reality or myth’, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 129–142.
Holliday, I., 2000, ‘Productivist welfare capitalism: social policy in East Asia’, Political Studies, Vol. 48, pp.706–723.
Hoppers, C.O. and Richards, H., 2012, Rethinking Thinking: Modernity’s ‘Other’ and the Transformation of the University, Pretoria: University of South Africa.
Horne, G., 2007, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African slave trade, New York: New York University Press.
Hountondji, P., 1990, ‘Recherche et extraversion: éléments pour une sociologie de la science dans les pays de la périphérie’, Africa Development, Vol. XV, No. ¾, pp. 149–158.
Huchzermeyer, M., 2002, ‘Informal settlements: production and intervention in twentieth-century Brazil and South Africa’, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 83–105.
Huchzermeyer, M., 2004, Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil, Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.
Leubolt, B., 2013, ‘Institutions, discourse and welfare: Brazil as a distributional regime’, Global Social Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 66–83.
Leubolt, B., 2014, Social policies and redistribution in Brazil, Global Labour University Working Paper No 26, pp. 1–31.
Leubolt, B., 2015, ‘From inclusive liberalism to inclusive developmentalism: the recent transformation of the Brazilian distributional regime’, Geopolitics, History, and International Relations, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 62–89.
Lodge, M., 2007, ‘Comparative public policy’, in F. Fischer, G.J. Miller and M.S. Sidney, eds., Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics and Methods, Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 273–289.
Lunn, Jenny, 2013, ed., Fieldwork in the global South: Ethical Challenges and Dilemmas, London: Routledge.
Mafeje, A., 1991, The Theory and ethnography of African social formations: The case of the interlacustrine kingdoms, Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series.
Mafeje, A., 1992, In Search of an Alternative: A Collection of Essays on Revolutionary Theory and Politics, Harare: SAPES Books.
Mafeje, A., 1996, Anthropology and Independent Africans: Suicide or End of an Era?, Dakar: CODESRIA Monograph Series No.4/96.
Mafeje, A., 2001, Anthropology in Post-Independence Africa: End of an Era or the Problem Self-Redefination [sic], Nairobi: Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Magubane, B., 1979, The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Mamdani, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mamdani, M., 2013, Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity, Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Mamdani, M., 2021, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Marx, A., 1998, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa and Brazil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mignolo, W., 2009, ‘Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 26, No. 7–8, pp. 159–181. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275). 13 June 2021.
Mignolo, W., 2011, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
Mitchell, L., 1999, ‘Combining focus groups and interviews: telling how it is; telling how it feels’, in R.S. Barbour and J. Kitzinger, eds., Developing Focus Group Research: Politics, Theory and Practice, London: Sage.
Mkandawire, T., and Yi, I., 2014, ‘Overview: learning from developmental success’, in T. Mkandawire and I. Yi, eds., Learning from the South Korean developmental success: effective developmental cooperation and synergistic institutions and policies, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 1-11.
Mkandawire, T., 2005, ‘African intellectuals and nationalism’, in T. Mkandawire, ed., African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development, New York: Zed Books.
Moran, Michael, Rein, Martin and Goodin, Robert, E., 2018, Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mudimbe, V.Y., 1988, The invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Nguyen, V.K., 2005, ‘Antiretroviral globalism, biopolitics and therapeutic citizen- ship’, in A. Ong and S.J. Collier, eds., Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 124–145.
Nkrumah, K., 1973, Revolutionary Path, London: Panaf Books.
Nyoka, B., 2013, ‘Negation and affirmation: a critique of sociology in South Africa’, African Sociological Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 2–24.
Nyoka, B., 2016, ‘Bernard Magubane’s “The Making of a Racist State” revisited: 20 years on’, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 47, No. 8, pp. 903–927.
Nyoka, B., 2019, ‘Archie Mafeje as revolutionary sociologist’, Theoria, Vol. 66, No. 158, pp. 1–26.
Oyewùmí, O., 2002, ‘Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies’, A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2.
Phiri, M.Z., 2017, ‘Comparative perspectives on South Africa’s and Brazil’s institu- tional inequalities under progressive policies’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 961–978. (https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2017.1343009). 13 June 2021.
Phiri, M.Z., 2020a, ‘Social assistance in national social policy architectures: a comparative study of South Africa’s and Brazil’s selected districts’, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of South Africa.
Phiri, M.Z., 2020b, ‘History of racial capitalism in Africa: violence, ideology and practice’, in S.O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola, eds., Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Porter, J., 1970, ‘Some observations on comparative studies’, in D. Forcese and S. Richer, eds., Stages of Social Research, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, pp. 141–154.
Ragin, C., 1981, ‘Comparative sociology and the comparative method’, International Journal of Comparative Studies, Vol. 22, pp. 102–120.
Rokkan, S., 1966, ‘Comparative cross-national research: the context of current efforts’, in R. Meritt and S. Rokkan, eds., Comparing Nations, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Said, E., 1978, Orientalism, London: Routledge & Keagan Paul Ltd.
Said, E., 1993, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage Books.
Said, E.,1994, Representations of the Intellectual, London: Vintage.
Sandoval, C., 2000, Methodology of the Oppressed, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sartori, G., 1970, ‘Concept misinformation in comparative politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 1033–1053.
Seidman, G., 2010, ‘Brazil’s “pro-poor” strategies: what South Africa could learn’, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, Vol. 72, No. 73, pp. 86–103.
Short, S.E., 2006, ‘Focus group interviews’ in E. Perecman and S.R. Curran, eds., A Handbook for Social Science Research: Essays and Bibliographic Sources on Research Design and Methods, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, pp. 103–116.
Shrank, A., 2006, ‘The case study and causal inference’, in E. Perecman and S.R. Curran, eds., A Handbook for Social Science Research: Essays and Bibliographic Sources on Research Design and Methods, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, pp. 169–175.
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